2010 OAUG Buyer's Guide - Volume 2

2010

vol. 2

THE Source for OAUG Buyers!

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2010 2

vol. 2

Table of Contents ARTICLES 4

Glatfelter Insurance Group Finds Fast ROI and Improved Productivity with GL Wand Reporting Tool

by Chris Meyer, Director Americas, Excel4apps

6

The Road to Fusion Architecture

8

by Floyd Teter and Michael Rulf, OAUG Fusion Council Co-Chairs

Upgrade vs. Implementation: Ten Reasons Why the Game Has Changed

by Helene Abrams, CEO, eprentise

10

Top 10 Ways to Make the Most of Your OAUG Membership

12

Seven Years on E-Business Suite: It Is Time to Change

by Helene Abrams, CEO, eprentise

14

Thinking Inside the Box Delivers Rapid Project Management Improvements A Case Study

17

by Kimberly McDonald Baker and Robert D. Anderson, CPA, Project Partners LLC

Oracle EBS Data Loading Using appLOAD™ at LifeWay Christian Resources

by Austin Davis, Vice President of Marketing, Chain-Sys

BUYER’S GUIDE CATEGORIES 20

Product Families

22

Services

24

Solution Areas

26

Company Listings

The 2010 OAUG Buyer’s Guide is a publication of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).

3525 Piedmont Road Building Five, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30305 phone: +1 404.240.0897, fax: +1 404.240.0998 e-mail: membership@oaug.com oaug.org

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2010

vol. 2

Glatfelter Insurance Group Finds Fast ROI and Improved Productivity with GL Wand Reporting Tool

by Chris Meyer, Director Americas, Excel4apps Excel4apps is a provider of best-in-class Excel based reporting and budgeting software for Oracle users. Its award winning GL Wand and Budget Wand products help Oracle financial professionals save time by delivering accurate and secure information in the familiar Excel environment. More information is available at www.excel4apps.com.

Established more than 50 years ago, Glatfelter Insurance Group (www.glatfelters.com) has grown into a multi-faceted insurance services business that provides both retail and wholesale insurance products to organizations and individuals across the United States. Through its 500 employees and 4,500 independent insurance brokers, the York, Pennsylvania-based company serves specialized entities like municipalities, schools, emergency services and hospice providers.

With ten years experience using Oracle and a system upgrade in progress, Glatfelter formed a senior level team to search for ways to improve productivity and simplify the reporting process. Employees were re-entering Oracle data into Microsoft Excel to create financial reports, and stacks of paper were generated on a monthly basis. The team sought a software solution that could help manage reporting costs while maximizing benefits from the company’s upgraded Oracle system.

Time consuming reports impact employee efficiency To generate the numerous detailed reports from Oracle required for its financial analysis process, Glatfelter employees had to re-key seemingly countless pages of data into Excel. For example, as part of its tax preparation process, Glatfelter must create up to ten balance sheets and income statements for each of its many business units. Also, back-up paper files and staff assistance were frequently needed to drill down into the detailed data required by executives.

Because detailed financial reports were generated monthly, Glatfelter’s accounting department wanted a way to directly distribute information to its many recipients without overuse of paper. In addition, financial users wanted more analytical power at their desktops and less reliance on information technology (IT) staff when creating reports.

Staff members also wanted the ability to easily generate attractive reports that allowed linkage of parent and child values for company cost center and account codes, while eliminating fields with no activity. With business growth and an upgrade to Oracle R12 in progress, Glatfelter had an opportunity to provide products designed specifically to meet its functional needs.

4

GL Wand provided the fastest ROI Glatfelter has ever had on a software investment.

Selection team chooses GL Wand for faster, more detailed reports Glatfelter staff members participate in the Oracle Americas Users Group and had seen vendor software tools that were designed specifically for Oracle users. After a product search, vendor interviews and trials of two products, the Glatfelter team selected GL Wand from Excel4apps.

GL Wand is an Excel based Oracle GL reporting tool designed for finance departments using Oracle 11i or R12. Because it is Excel based, users can easily create, edit and publish finance reports without IT assistance and with very little training. Reports are refreshable on demand and preserve all formatting and Excel formulas.

Developed exclusively for Oracle Financials, GL Wand is tightly integrated and easy to install and maintain. It follows Oracle security rules, meaning no back door for accessing unpermitted data.

In trialing GL Wand, the Glatfelter selection team was significantly impressed by the ability to click on the parent value in a report and see all child ranges underneath. This function is unique to GL Wand and was a major factor in its selection. The team also appreciated that GL Wand was solely an Oracle product and that support personnel were intimately familiar with all aspects of Oracle.

GL Wand’s user friendliness enabled rapid deployment and adoption of the new tool at Glatfelter. Employees in Finance and IT found the product easy to use with minimal training and a fast installation.

GL Wand saves “countless hours” of data entry Once Glatfelter created and filled its templates in GL Wand, projects that previously took hours, days or even weeks to compile were accomplished in just minutes or even instantaneously. For example, year-end balance sheets that previously took as many as three weeks can be completed in only ten minutes.

The Get Balance function creates a link to the Oracle General Ledger that allows rapid report generation.

“The product has saved us countless hours of keying data and freed us to focus more on the analysis of the data,” said Jennifer S. Raffensberger, corporate controller for Glatfelter Insurance Group. “This has to be the quickest ROI we’ve had on any software investment.”

In addition, purchasing, payables, general ledger and expense reports are now quickly generated and delivered electronically. Month-end reports changed from a time consuming two-day process to a ten minute process with a date change inside GL Wand. In addition, ad-hoc analysis is much faster using GL Wand, resulting in a significant time savings from account inquiry to drill down.

“We’ve only been using GL Wand for a few months and have already found it to be the best financial reporting package we have,” Raffensberger described. “The more we use the software, the more applications we find for it.”

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2010

vol. 2

The Road to Fusion Architecture

by Floyd Teter and Michael Rulf, OAUG Fusion Council Co-Chairs

As Chair and Co-Chair of the Fusion Council for the Oracle Applications Users Group, we’re frequently asked

by Oracle Applications users about how to best prepare for Oracle’s Fusion Architecture.

There is significant variety in the background of the users asking this question. Some of these users are E-Business Suite customers; others use PeopleSoft or JD Edwards, while some are on another product under the Applications Unlimited umbrella. Some users plan to upgrade to Fusion Applications, while others want to extend their current applications with Fusion Middleware, and yet others are considering the benefits of the Lifecycle Management products. The permutations of configurations and plans seem endless. Despite the varied situations, our answer always includes four basic elements.

Know What You Have On Hand Take the time to understand and inventory your current system configuration. What operating system are you running on each tier? What hardware are you using? How much storage capacity do you have and how quickly are you consuming that capacity? Which applications do you use and what version of each are you running?

Get Current If you’re not patched up to the latest supported versions of your operating system, applications server, applications suite, browser, etc., then get there. It’s important to baseline your system to a supported level before attempting any type of upgrade, modification or wholesale change.

Catalog Your Customizations Ever notice that most of the hiccups in upgrading any part of a business system configuration are rooted in customizations? We all seem to need them to some degree, but the more we have, the higher the cost of maintaining and upgrading. So what do we do with them? Catalog your customizations, using the following steps as a minimal guideline to reduce the number: 1. List all your customizations (often easier said than done).

2. Record the business reason for each customization and determine if that reason still exists. If not, plan

to decommission that customization.

3. Try comparing the customization to “vanilla” functionality in the Oracle Applications you already own.

With the all the functionality added in recent updates and releases, you may find similar functionality is

available out-of-the-box. If so, plan to decommission that customization.

4.

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If, after working through steps 1 through 3, you still need the customization, make note of the platform technology for the customization. If your customization is based on “sunsetting” technology, such as Mod PL/SQL, you’ll likely have to consider migrating or redeveloping the customization as part of your plan going forward.

5. Finalize your catalog by including your plan for each customization. Will it be decommissioned,

migrated as is, or redeveloped?

Move to Fusion Architecture In Bite-Sized Chunks Oracle’s Fusion Architecture includes a wide array of products and possibilities. While the first release of Fusion Applications is sometime in the future, Fusion Middleware is available today. The Fusion Middleware family includes products such as the SOA Suite for process-based integration, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for converting data into information, BI Publisher for delivering a single report in multiple ways, Web Center for providing a unified user interface, Lifecycle Management Products like Enterprise Manager and Configuration Support Manager, Applications Development Framework and JDeveloper development tools . . . there is much more than I can cover here. In addition, Oracle is now offering ecosystem products: ways to gain Fusion functionality by integrating without requiring significant upgrading. With all the potential variations, how do you start?

An edict like “we’re moving to Oracle Fusion by the end of the fiscal year” is probably a poor choice. It’s like trying to eat an entire triple-decker chocolate cake in one bite-tempting though all that chocolate may be, the end result won’t be good. The learning curve, the volume of products and choices, and the complexities of making it all work together are too much for most enterprises in a single project.

A better approach may be to move toward Fusion Architecture in small increments, letting your business needs determine what gets done first. Try the products out in bite-sized chunks. Consider your business needs and pick a low-risk, quick turnaround project that will provide some value to your organization.

Some examples: • • •

Build a set of reports in BI Publisher.

Come up on Enterprise Manager with the Application Packs.

Roll out a set of dashboards with OBIEE.

Once you’ve gotten a quick win, then wash – rinse – repeat. You can take on bigger projects, such as SOAbased integration or upgrading to Fusion Applications (once they’re generally available) after you’ve built some momentum and critical skill sets.

So there you have it . . . four steps to get you on the road to Oracle Fusion Architecture.

Michael Rulf is the Executive Director - Product Development, AT&T Hosting and Application Services (H&AS).

Floyd M. Teter is the Chair of the OAUG Fusion Council, an Oracle ACE Director and a Systems Engineer for Institutional Business Systems at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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2010

vol. 2

Upgrade vs. Implementation: Ten Reasons Why the Game Has Changed

by Helene Abrams, CEO, eprentise

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) 11i customers who pair eprentise Transformation software with Oracle’s Upgrade software change the game and redefine the R12 goal. Here are definitions, an Upgrade graphic, and ten reasons to Upgrade.

Definitions: • REIMPLEMENTATION – Customer implementation of Oracle EBS R12 instance, configured with prior

11i plus new business setups, coupled with selection, extract, and transformation of 11i data, which is

loaded via public interfaces and custom scripts into R12.

• UPGRADE – Transformation to upgradable 11i instance that reflects current and future business, plus

standard Oracle upgrade to R12. Potential post-upgrade R12 transformation for objects without an

11i precursor.

• EPRENTISE SOFTWARE – includes REORGANIZATION, CONSOLIDATION, DATA QUALITY AND

FLEXFIELD software products.

• • • • •

Business process changes Business structure changes, incl. OUs COA changes Clean data, compliant with standards Shared service centers

11i Obsolete Setups

11i Data

• •

Instance you always wished for, AND it’s upgradable Use it as long as you want, until you need the value-added R12 features

eprentise Transformation

11i Upgradable

No data loss

11i Data Transformed

eprentise Transformation + Oracle Upgrade Path from one or more EBS 11i instances to a single global R12 instance

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Oracle 11i R12 Upgrade

No data loss

R12

R12 Data Transformed & R12 formats

Upgrade enables R12 Features • Centralized accounting architecture • Global tax engine • New ledger and ledger set architecture • Multi-org access control features • Centralized banking model • Advanced global intercompany system

Ten Reasons to Upgrade: 1. Reduced schedule and technical risk. UPGRADE relies on commercial EBS conversion software

from Oracle and eprentise, rather than REIMPLEMENTATION’S technical analysts and data

conversion programmers.

2. You can change your Chart of Accounts. UPGRADE uses FLEXFIELD to change one or more COA’s

segments and values so you can adopt a single global COA. 3.

You test new EBS setups in familiar 11i. UPGRADE uses EPRENTISE REORGANIZATION to change any fundamental EBS setup you have postponed until reimplementation. The setups Oracle says are “not easily changed” include: Legal Entities, Sets Of Books (Ledgers), Operating Units, Key Flexfields, Calendars, Costing Methods, Inventory Organizations, and Asset Categories.

4. Transaction data will be changed, too. UPGRADE uses EPRENTISE SOFTWARE to convert all 11i data to

reflect all COA and fundamental setup changes.

5. Your history matters. UPGRADE uses Oracle Upgrade to convert all 11i data to R12. Business users

are happier with all EBS history and current data in a single R12 instance, rather than distributed

between legacy and active instances.

6. Avoid custom data conversion. With REIMPLEMENTATION, you are on your own to convert and

migrate your 11i data into R12. Unless you load everything, compromises lead to complexity, delays,

and continuing expense.

7. True single instance for past and future data. With UPGRADE the result is a single R12 instance,

whereas with REIMPLEMENTATION you will have two: R12 plus the legacy 11i instance in read-only

mode as a reference to history and the prior business structures.

8. Avoid multiple custom conversions and legacy instances. For multi-national organizations with multiple

EBS 11i instances, REIMPLEMENTATION requires data migrations from each legacy 11i instance into the

single R12 instance. You will also retain all legacy 11i read-only instances.

9. Upgrade offers the most direct path and shortest time to single instance R12 business value. The most

powerful UPGRADE advantage for multi-nationals is consolidation to a single global instance with

standard business processes and all history data prior to the Oracle Upgrade to R12.

10. Upgrades cost less. EBS customers pay for Oracle Upgrade software even if they select

REIMPLEMENTATION. Why leave money on the table and pay extra to do it yourself?

If you use EBS 11i, visit www.eprentise.com to learn how to use EPRENTISE SOFTWARE to deploy R12 faster, better, and cheaper.

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2010

vol. 2

Top 10 Ways to Make the Most of Your OAUG Membership: 1.

Share the Wealth: Your OAUG membership allows for an unlimited number of contacts. Make sure everyone on your team has created a membership profile and is taking advantage of all the valuable education, networking and advocacy opportunities the OAUG has to offer.

2. Equip your entire team with knowledge and skills.

Tap into a wealth of knowledge and experience via user-driven conferences, specialized boot camps,

convenient eLearning presentations, vendor awareness sessions, and more.

3. Attend a local Geo meeting in your area.

Come together to network with other users and experts to discuss and share ideas covering many

diverse topics. A list of Geo groups and upcoming meetings can be found on the OAUG Web site.

4.

Share knowledge.

Submit a white paper and speak at one of our conferences. Join the conversations via the OAUG Knowledge Factory, to discuss and share what is going in on in the world of Oracle Applications. Or, share your expertise as a panelist at a Geo or SIG meeting. Whatever your interest, we have an outlet!

5. Volunteer.

There are lots of great ways to get involved in the OAUG through different committees, tasks forces and

councils. We rely on volunteers to contribute their talents and make the OAUG what it is today!

6. Log In.

The OAUG Web site is filled with great tools, tips and techniques, insight from other users, shortcuts to

success, how-to guides and much more. Take advantage of this 24/7 access to information.

7.

Showcase your company’s products and build your brand.

Associate Members can list their company in the OAUG Buyer’s Guide ― the industry’s comprehensive index of proven business tools, revolutionary approaches, emerging ideas and expert-delivered services. Many sponsorship opportunities are available throughout the year! Whatever you choose, it not only offers a great opportunity for exposure, but a way for company reps to network with industry professionals.

8. Put yourself in front of Oracle Leadership.

Have a great idea about an Application enhancement, product development or usability? Let us know!

With the support and strength of the unified OAUG community, your voice will be heard by Oracle.

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9.

Get recognized.

If you would like an opportunity to recognize your company or a client, here’s an idea: submit a nomination for one of the OAUG’s yearly awards: Member of the Year and Innovator of the Year.

An award is always a great form of acknowledgement for a job well done!

10. Search for talent.

Need to fill a position? Post a job on the OAUG Job Board to find great talent that will fill your

existing needs! It’s also simple for job seekers to post resumes.

With an OAUG membership, you can have all this and more! Join the OAUG’s global community of hands on users, project managers, C level executives, third-party solution providers and subject matter experts who have increased their productivity and maximized their return on their investment in Oracle Applications.

For one low cost, you and an unlimited number of your employees can get started today. Question? contact Katie Truex, OAUG Member Services Coordinator, at ktruex@oaug.com or 404.760.2876. Or visit the OAUG website www.oaug.org/membership.

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2010

vol. 2

Seven Years on E-Business Suite: It Is Time to Change

by Helene Abrams, CEO, eprentise

Cochlear™ has approximately 70% of the world’s market share in the development, manufacture, and marketing of implantable hearing devices that help those who are severely to profoundly hearing impaired. The company employs over 1800 employees in three regions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific, including more than 200 employees focused on research and development. The company’s products are exported to more than 90 countries, where 1000+ clinics are available to help tens of thousands of those in need. Cochlear has significantly grown in size and geographic scope over the past seven years since implementing Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS).

Cochlear runs EBS 11i financials, sales, service, manufacturing, supply chain, and human resources. With eprentise software they have been able to make necessary changes that are not possible or practical using standard EBS functionality.

Wayne Ceely, Manager of Finance Systems, and Francis Nocom, Applications Manager, needed to update Oracle EBS to accommodate growth and global operations, and to support a major 2010 Business Intelligence initiative.

The Finance Department determined that within the Chart Of Accounts (COA) the Balance Sheet accounts had issues due to the company’s rapid growth and geographic expansion. Ceely knew that EBS did not provide setups, tools, or utilities to change a COA. Nocom realized that if Finance changed the COA in GL, a number of other changes to interfaces and reports would be needed, and the transactions in the subledgers would not align with the new COA. Nocom learned that FlexField software can change the COA in Oracle E-Business Suite. He liked several aspects of the software: •

•

• •

•

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The Finance Department could use FlexField to map the old COA values to the new, validate the changes, and execute multiple test cycles using FlexField’s workbench-like interface. They would require minimal IT technical support.

That would free up IT for impact analysis and any post-COA-change adjustments to the reports or interfaces.

Since FlexField changes everything in the EBS where old COA values are used, everything balances.

After running FlexField, it would look like the new COA values had been used since the initial implementation.

FlexField makes all the changes efficiently, and after the data conversion, there would be no add-on software or translation tables in the EBS environment.

Ceely arranged discussions with FlexField customers. The Finance team became comfortable that they could indeed change the COA and better accommodate the growth and company globalization.

Linda Shepherd, Global Cost & Inventory Manager, had a more pressing financial problem to solve for Cochlear. There was no consistency in the way inventory valuation accounts were applied across regions and sometimes even within an inventory organization. At times the same account was used for all the costing accounts (material handling, overhead processing, material overhead, outside processing, and expense) and at other times that same account was used only for one of the costs. Shepherd planned to standardize global use of the valuation accounts and correct the prior inconsistencies.

Oracle states on Metalink that it is not possible to alter a sub inventory account that contains stock. Shepherd’s organization would have had to remove reserved items from sales orders and manufacturing jobs, then from the sub inventory, change the sub inventory account, and then reverse the process. Other considerations contributed to her decision to look for a different solution: •

•

•

The regions relied on inventory ag »» ing reports to manage older items, but the valuation account change procedure would erase the aging data.

Changes would have to be coordinated across regions, with a number of people involved over a significant time. It would be a big effort.

Mistakes could “impact our ability to supply customers when required.”

She asked if FlexField could help her correct the sub inventory valuations, but it only changes the COA in EBS. However, the eprentise Reorganization software was able to make the changes Shepherd required. Using eprentise, Cochlear made the account changes at one time, updated the costing batches in the General Ledger, and made the changes everywhere in the EBS database. All the balances tied out, aging data was unaffected, and the entire process was completed in just a few weeks. Nocom coordinated both projects without re-implementing Oracle or draining IT’s resources: •

•

Adopt global sub inventory valuation standards for consistent inventory management without disrupting customer sales orders.

Change the COA to better support growth, global operations, and the BI project.

Ceely said “Enterprises now have a lot more options to fine tune E-Business Suite.”

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2010

vol. 2

Thinking Inside the Box Delivers Rapid Project Management Improvements A Case Study

by Kimberly McDonald Baker and Robert D. Anderson, CPA, Project Partners LLC

Today’s Reality In today’s increasingly competitive market, project-centric firms need more visibility into work execution while C-level executives are pressuring IT teams to deliver expanded capabilities at a reduced price point and faster. The need for operational improvement is stronger than ever, but delivering that on an ever-tightening budget is a challenge.

Justify the Investment Several independent studies clearly indicate improved Project Portfolio Management (PPM) practices directly result in improved financial performance.

Project-intensive organizations are hard pressed to find a better area in which to invest limited resources. On the Project Partners website you will find the whitepapers and presentations used by our customers to justify further investment in their PPM environment. With the business case clearly made, the focus turns to obtaining the best return on the limited funds available.

Look Inside the Box Several of our customers asked us to “think inside the box” or in this case, inside their company, to determine how to use what they already had to address the challenges they face. You can follow the same approach we took.

Using Oracle Applications and Oracle Projects to capture transaction information, they also had the most widely used tool among project teams: Microsoft® Excel. What they didn’t have was a way to leverage these existing tools in a more meaningful way. Project Partners provided the shortcut to success.

Identify the Solution The Oracle Project Management module uses existing transaction information, combining a forward looking perspective with historical cost and billing data. It was easy to make a business case to implement Oracle Project Management (PJT) to improve our customers’ project management maturity levels and deliver the competitive advantages that improvement offers.

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PJT allows Project Managers (PMs) to manage all their project information from one place; however, its HTML user interface usually requires a significant investment in training before users feel comfortable with it. The HTML based interface also requires a connection to the office to access the project data, and PMs frequently travel to client sites in order to perform their jobs.

Project personnel use Microsoft Excel as their primary tool for maintaining project data, ranging across work breakdown structures, schedules, budgets, status reports, forecasts, issues and change orders. They prefer to see their reporting data in spreadsheets, allowing them to perform any type of analysis they desire. Having access to project data “on the go” in a disconnected mode meets the needs of end users working at client sites. So our customers use Project Partners User Interface Applications (UI-Apps) to pull Oracle data into Excel, working in either connected or disconnected mode.

Instead of using 20 Oracle HTML screens, our customers use a single Excel worksheet, while retaining the same functionality as working on line with Oracle Project Management.

•

•

•

An Engineering and Construction organization that uses UI-Apps was able to deploy Oracle Project Management functions to their 900 project managers using just four hours of training.

A Professional Services organization enabled their mobile project managers to review and update periodic revenue forecasts in 1/6th the time their experienced Oracle Project Management Users took using purely HTML access.

Another global consulting firm sees invaluable benefit of UI-Apps disconnected mode of working for their remote users who do not have reliable Internet Access for long periods of connectivity. This allows the PMs to concentrate on their primary job while knowing they have the information they need on their laptops without waiting for a connection to their office intranet.

Quick Delivery Our customers decided the least expensive approach was to have skilled guides quickly deliver their solution.

Project Partners offers a fixed price accelerated implementation of Oracle Project Management and Project Partners User Interface Applications that will get you started using planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilities in seven weeks, at a very attractive price.

The solution outlined above minimizes training and deployment costs and quickly delivers many major productivity improvements within a neatly packaged box.

About Project Partners Project Partners, LLC provides expert Project Portfolio Management services and software that extend Oracle and Primavera applications to meet the needs of projectdriven firms. An Oracle Certified Partner, Primavera Technology Partner, Microsoft Partner and @Task Gold Partner, Project Partners has executed global implementations for clients who manage tens of thousands of projects, thousands of users, multiple languages and currencies. More information about Project Partners can be found at www.ProjectP.com.

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Oracle EBS data loading using appLOAD™ at LifeWay Christian Resources.

by Austin Davis, Vice President of Marketing, Chain-Sys

LifeWay Christian Resources is a religious nonprofit organization and is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention. LifeWay produces Bibles, church literature, books, music, audio and video recordings, church supplies, and Internet services. The ministry operates 154 LifeWay Christian Stores across the country.

LifeWay’s home office is in Nashville, Tennessee, where about 1250 employees work.

LifeWay has successfully implemented Oracle EBS Financials, Projects, APC, Inventory, Purchasing, Order Management and Advanced Pricing modules for its global operations. LifeWay is on version 11.5.10.2 and their production database size is 1200 GB. Data loading activities performed by LifeWay: • Item creation and update.

• Item categories, item catalogs and item cross

reference creation and update.

• PLM: Advanced Products Catalog creation.

• Bills of material Creation and Update.

• New Customer Creation and Update.

• AR Invoice, Credit Memos and Debit

memo creation.

• AR Cash Receipt application with or

without the invoice numbers.

• Project Budget Creation.

• Projects with tasks and key member creation and update.

• Price List creation and update.

• Sales order processing.

CHAIN•SYS www.chain-sys.com

The Struggle with DataLoader Manual mass data loading/maintenance within Oracle E-Business Suite can be tedious and very time consuming. LifeWay utilized DataLoader for performing data loading as an alternative to manual methods.

The DataLoader tool took lot of time and still could not provide a fool-proof and robust solution. Amy Goolsby recalls that for about 1500 items loading it required constant monitoring and took 2 weeks with 8 computers in the conference room. This time does not include the data loader spread sheet preparation time.

LifeWay chooses appLOAD™ LifeWay evaluated and selected appLOAD™ productivity tool from Chain-Sys Corporation for its Data Loading activities in Oracle E-Business Suite. appLOAD™ is a new generation data conversion tool for Oracle E-Business Suite R12/11i. appLOAD™ is a reliable and scalable back end web based application which is not front end driven and not EXCEL macros driven. This tool aims to reduce the cost and time of Oracle EBS data conversion activities. Any Business User can confidently use this tool and convert the data (continued next page) 17

without any technical assistance. With appLOAD™, there is no programming required for any of your data conversion needs. appLOAD supports all the open interfaces and API’s available within Oracle E-Business Suite R12/11i.

Productivity gains using appLOAD™ Within a week of installing appLOAD, the business users started using the tool very effectively for their data loads. Amy Goolsby remarks, “What I like about appLOAD is how fast it is. appLOAD executes the data loading processes in the background with no baby sitting needed. I can do the same task in 4 hours that used to take two weeks.”

David Jamieson of LifeWay says, “The projected return on investment provided through use of the appLOAD application easily justified the cost of the product. We have identified uses that impact all business areas within E-Business Suite. Chain-Sys has been extremely responsive in identifying the most efficient uses of the tools and responding to our questions as we have begun to use the tool.” appLOAD™ Benefits • Time and cost savings.

• Highly stable, reliable, and scalable.

• Fast in processing the data loads.

• All processes are executed on the

application server as a Java

process (thread).

• No need to watch Desktop/

Laptop screens.

when processing takes place.

• Highly user friendly.

appLOAD™ Productivity Suite - Hub and Spoke Model for LifeWay Christian Resources Oracle EBS QA

Oracle EBS Test

Oracle EBS Development

Oracle EBS 11i – Non Production Instances

Oracle EBS Production

Production Instance

The Right Tool The appLOAD™ tools are a right choice appLOAD™ appLOAD™ for the IT environments of today and the technology changes that are coming up. Rooted in Enterprise Java/J2EE standards, it takes advantage of the enterprise quality scalability and reliability of the platform and is amenable to traditional deployments within the enterprise as well as to the Software as a Service model. appLOAD™ is currently available in Managed SaaS and Subscription SaaS for EBS Data Conversion needs.

About Chain-Sys Chain-Sys is an Oracle Certified Partner and has been highly successful in EBS Engagements using OBAs and appLOAD™ tools. The appLOAD Productivity tools (appLOAD™, appEXTRACT™, appINTERFACE™, appMIGRATE™) accelerate the technical implementation, ease production data maintenance, migrate data to R12 and provide around 85% cost savings. www.chain-sys.com. austin@chain-sys.com.

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vol. 2

Product Families

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

E-Business Suite 170 Systems

FulcrumWay

OneNeck IT Services

Aquire

IT Convergence

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Bottomline Technologies

KBACE Technologies, Inc.

Project Partners LLC

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

Loftware, Inc.

ReadSoft

Chain-Sys

Margaret Coleman Consulting

Rolta TUSC

CM Mitchell Consulting

MENTISoftware Solutions

Sierra Atlantic

Colibri Limited Company

Mercury Technology Group

SmartDog Services

eprentise

More4Apps

Unitask Software

Excel4apps

Noetix Corporation

Vertex, Inc.

PeopleSoft Enterprise Bottomline Technologies

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Noetix Corporation

Vertex, Inc.

OneNeck IT Services

Siebel CRM/OBIEE Noetix Corporation

Teradata Corporation

Rolta TUSC

Fusion Middleware IT Convergence

Rolta TUSC

More4Apps

Sierra Atlantic

Oracle Communications

about these

FLEXform Software

product family

Oracle Retail

providers in

FLEXform Software

the Company

Agile Colibri Limited Company

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Find out more

Listings section Margaret Coleman Consulting

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Product Families

Primavera Project Partners LLC

Hyperion Excel4apps

Rolta TUSC

FulcrumWay

Teradata Corporation

Mercury Technology Group

Other 170 Systems

eprentise

Aquire

Loftware, Inc.

CM Mitchell Consulting

ReadSoft

Colibri Limited Company

SmartDog Services

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2010

vol. 2

Services

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Consulting Bottomline Technologies

Loftware, Inc.

Chain-Sys

Margaret Coleman Consulting

CM Mitchell Consulting

More4Apps

Excel4apps

Rolta TUSC

IT Convergence

SmartDog Services

Implementation FulcrumWay Loftware, Inc. Margaret Coleman Consulting Sierra Atlantic

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Services

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Software 170 Systems

MENTISoftware Solutions

Aquire

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Bottomline Technologies

Project Partners LLC

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

ReadSoft

eprentise

Rolta TUSC

Excel4apps

Teradata Corporation

FLEXform Software

Unitask Software

Vertex, Inc.

Other 170 Systems

eprentise

Aquire

ReadSoft

Hosting Services Colibri Limited Company

Mercury Technology Group

FulcrumWay

OneNeck IT Services

IT Convergence

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Rolta TUSC

Managed Services Colibri Limited Company

Rolta TUSC

OneNeck IT Services

Sierra Atlantic

Mercury Technology Group

SmartDog Services

Systems Integration

Find out more

CM Mitchell Consulting

Project Partners LLC

KBACE Technologies, Inc.

Rolta TUSC

More4Apps

about these service providers in

Training FLEXform Software

the Company Listings section

Rolta TUSC

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Solution Areas

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Enterprise Performance Management Bottomline Technologies

FulcrumWay

Teradata Corporation

eprentise

More4Apps

Vertex, Inc.

Excel4apps

Rolta TUSC

Enterprise Performance Management 170 Systems

Mercury Technology Group

SmartDog Services

Colibri Limited Company

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Teradata Corporation

Excel4apps

ReadSoft

FLEXform Software

Rolta TUSC

Financial Management CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

CM Mitchell Consulting

IT Convergence

Governance, Risk and Compliance CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

FulcrumWay

CM Mitchell Consulting

MENTISoftware Solutions

Unitask Software

Human Capital Management Aquire

KBACE Technologies, Inc.

Colibri Limited Company

Perceptive Software, Inc.

Master Data Management

about these

More4Apps

solutions

On Demand Mercury Technology Group

Find out more

providers in Project Partners LLC

OneNeck IT Services

the Company Listings section

Product Lifecycle Management eprentise

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Sierra Atlantic

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Solution Areas

Project Management 170 Systems

OneNeck IT Services

IT Convergence

Rolta TUSC

SmartDog Services

Supply Chain Management Colibri Limited Company

Margaret Coleman Consulting

Rolta TUSC

Loftware, Inc.

ReadSoft

Sierra Atlantic

Warehouse Management Loftware, Inc.

Margaret Coleman Consulting

Other Aquire

FLEXform Software

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Company Listings

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

170 Systems Sales Contact: Kevin Ostrander 36 Crosby Drive Bedford, MA 01730 USA info@170systems.com 781.743.2100 www.170systems.com 170 Systems, an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner, provides complete proven solutions for AP process automation, including the 170 MarkView Financial Suite; 170 MarkView Advisor, a real-time AP visibility and performance management application and SupplierExpress, a self-service AP portal.

Aquire Sales Contact: Marc Ramos 5215 North O’Connor Blvd. | Suite 300 Irving, Texas 75039 USA MarcRamos@aquire.com 214.574.5020 www.aquire.com Selected by more than 2,700 customers across the globe, the OrgPublisher solutions suite provides functionality that rapidly enables users to chart, view, model and analyze organizational hierarchies and human capital information contained within Oracle®, PeopleSoft® and JD Edwards®

Bottomline Technologies Sales Contact: Rick Bell 325 Corporate Drive Portsmouth, NH 03801 USA info@bottomline.com 800.472.1321 www.bottomline.com Bottomline Technologies provides collaborative payment, invoice and document automation solutions to corporations and financial institutions around the world. Our solutions are used to streamline and manage processes involving payments, global cash management, transactional documents and invoice approval.

Headquartered in the United States, Bottomline also maintains offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

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Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Company Listings

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business Sales Contact: John Thomas 2700 Lake Cook Road Riverwoods, IL 60015 John.Thomas@wolterskluwer.com 800.915.5674 www.SalesTax.com CCH is the leader in tax information and software solutions. Reduce the time you spend on sales tax compliance with CorpSystem Sales Tax Office for Oracle, which offers sophisticated calculation logic, tax rate and taxability content, and jurisdiction boundary information.

Chain-Sys Sales Contact: Austin Davis 325 S.Clinton St. | Suite 205 Grand Ledge MI 48837 austin@chain-sys.com 517.627.1173 ext 202 www.chain-sys.com

CHAIN•SYS www.chain-sys.com

appLOAD™ data loading into EBS for initial conversions and regular data maintenance, available in traditional and SaaS models. Reliable and Scalable server based solution and not driven by excel macros. appMIGRATE™ provides easy data migration into R12 and results in 85% cost savings.

CM Mitchell Consulting Sales Contact: Jennifer Pippen 1805 Shea Center Drive | Suite 240 Highlands Ranch, CO 80129 jennifer.pippen@cm-mitchell.com 720.257.8735 www.cm-mitchell.com CM Mitchell Consulting is pleased to announce that DocSavi is a Validated Integration for Oracle’s EBusiness Suite. Through DocSavi, content management documents are available to Oracle E-Business Suite users at the touch of a “paper clip.”

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Company Listings

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Colibri Limited Company Sales Contact: Jimmy Jones 419 E Crossville Rd | Suite 102 Roswell, GA 30173 USA jjones@colibrilimited.com 678.352.1001 ext 106 www.colibrilimited.com We assist clients in fully leveraging Oracle Applications functionality and improving their Database operations.

We specialize in managing and delivering Oracle e-Business Suite solutions as well as remote and on-site DBA and development services. Our consultants average 12 years of Oracle and 17 years of industry experience.

We provide seasoned resources with skills in Program and Project Management; Application Implementation; Process Improvement; Application and Database Upgrades, Training, Managed Services and Hosting; Database Recovery and Tuning; and Regulatory Compliance.

eprentise Sales Contact: Helene Abrams 8815 Conroy Windermere Rd. | Suite 302 Orlando, FL 32835 USA habrams@eprentise.com 888.943.5363 www.eprentise.com eprentise provides Transformation Software for Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestitures in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS). eprentise software generates all the code to perform instance consolidations or reorganizations, merge inventories or ledgers, move legal entities, and change calendars. eprentise has helped EBS customers increase data visibility, increase data quality, and avoid re-implementing. The company’s flagship product, FlexFieldŽ, changes the segments, values, or code combinations in an EBS Chart of Accounts without reimplementation or manual conversions.

Excel4apps Sales Contact: Scott Stollwerk 8384 Six Forks Road | Suite 201 Raleigh NC, 27615 USA sales@excel4apps.com 919.238.4040 www.excel4apps.com Excel4apps is a provider of best-in-class Excel based reporting and budgeting software for Oracle users.

Its award winning GL Wand and Budget Wand products help Oracle financial professionals save time by delivering accurate and secure information in the familiar Excel environment. All products are available for immediate download and free trial, installing in minutes with no data warehouse and no additional hardware, setup or security configuration needed. Excel4apps maintains offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, UAE and South Africa.

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Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Company Listings

FLEXform Software Sales Contact: Randy Safier 4141 N. Atlantic Blvd | Suite 200 Auburn Hills, MI 48326 rsafier@flexform.com 248.853.7500 www.flexform.com FLEXform is a document generation solution that works directly with applications. FLEXform is easy-to-use, produces laser or electronic documents and includes tools to cut costs by recruiting document recipients to go paperless and software to develop/maintain your own document formats.

FulcrumWay Sales Contact: Jane Jones 15950 North Dallas Parkway | Suite 400 Dallas, TX 75248 USA jjones@fulcrumway.com 866.5.FULCRUM (3852786) www.fulcrumway.com FulcrumWay is a leading global provider of Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions that help organizations rapidly assess enterprise risks, reliably execute business processes and easily monitor internal controls.

FulcrumWay’s proven risk and controls management expertise and software services enable companies to leverage investments in information technology and turn GRC challenges into improved performance. FulcrumWay is a Certified Oracle Systems Integrator and member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) http:// solutions.oracle.com/partners/fulcrumway.

IT Convergence Sales Contact: Adam Schroeder 450 Sansome Street | 13th Floor San Francisco, CA 94111 aschroeder@itconvergence.com 800.675.0032 ext 2527 www.itconvergence.com IT Convergence is the premier, global provider of Oracle E-Business Suite, Fusion Middleware, and Database solutions. We offer consulting, hosting, support, education, and development services through our offices in North America, China, and Latin America enabling our clients to improve business performance, wherever they are in the globe. Since 1998, IT Convergence has successfully partnered with 600 companies in over 50 countries.

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2010

vol. 2

Company Listings

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Loftware, Inc. Sales Contact: Sales@loftware.com 166 Corporate Drive Portsmouth, NH 03801 USA sales@loftware.com 603.766.3630 www.loftware.com Loftware is the foremost authority and market software leader in delivering innovative business solutions for meeting a company’s global labeling requirements. Loftware’s enterprise output label and print management software suite enables organizations running Oracle® and other major ERP, supply chain and warehouse management applications to quickly develop and deploy complex barcode label and RFID smart label tags.

Loftware offers a full range of direct consultative and implementation services.

Margaret Coleman Consulting Sales Contact: Maggie Coleman PO Box 620238 Woodside, CA 94062 USA maggiecoleman@comcast.net 415.215.1112 We have specialized in implementation and upgrade of Oracle E-Business Suite applications since 1989. We are experts in Manufacturing, Order Management, Shipping, Supply Chain Planning including APS, Purchasing, and Warehouse Management. We offer a broad range of services including full long term implementations, project planning and management, training, user requirements definition, organization architecture design and setup, phone support, design of reports, customizations, interfaces and conversion processes, testing support, and short-term expert consulting on design problems.

MENTISoftware Sales Contact: Alicia Formella 311 E. 72nd Street | Suite 2A New York, NY 10021 aliciaf@mentisoftware.com 212.988.4635 www.mentisoftware.com GRC solutions for databases and applications that operate from a common platform and console: sensitive data discovery, masking, intrusion prevention, access control, and monitoring with built-in metadata, data classification, security rules and templates for easy implementation and zero performance impact.

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Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Company Listings

Mercury Technology Group Sales Contact: Brian Day 111 Pacifica Avenue | Suite 100 Irvine, CA 92618 USA brian.day@mercurytechnology.com 866.417.0260 x300 www.mercurytechnology.com Oracle E-Business Suite hosting solutions that minimize cost (up to 50% less than OOD), maximize QOS (performance, reliability), and give you piece of mind (SAS70, DR). MTG frees you to focus on improving your business instead of maintaining your systems.

More4Apps Sales Contact: Sarah Conzemius 11400 W. Olympic Blvd. | Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90064 USA usasales@more4apps.com 310.445.8853 www.more4apps.com Our product suite is a range of MS Excel-based products that help you load data into Oracle Applications more quickly and accurately, enabling you to slash data entry costs, improve the accuracy and currency of reporting information. More4Apps are experienced Oracle professionals, and our tools have been designed and developed with input from our customers.

Noetix Corporation Sales Contact: sales@noetix.com 5010 148th Avenue NE | Suite 100 Redmond, WA 98052 USA sales@noetix.com 866.4NOETIX (663849) or 425.372.2699 www.noetix.com Noetix provides software for instant operational and ad hoc reporting from Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Siebel CRM. Our patented, metadata-driven technology and lean architecture deliver immediate access to data, resulting in the lowest-cost BI solution to acquire, implement, and maintain. Noetix uses award-winning software to quickly eliminate the costly, manual mapping required to set up an enterprise reporting environment. More than 1,400 customers worldwide use Noetix everyday to rapidly gain business intelligence insight into their organizations.

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Company Listings

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

OneNeck IT Services Sales Contact: Joseph Hanna 5301 N Pima Rd | Suite 100 Scottsdale, AZ 85250 USA Joseph.Hanna@OneNeck.com 480.315.3000 www.oneneck.com OneNeck IT Services is a premier Oracle hosting and managed services provider. As an Oracle Certified Partner, OneNeck provides a complete suite of Oracle outsourcing services including application, database and infrastructure management, coupled with 24/7 functional and technical support.

Perceptive Software, Inc. Sales Contact: Drew Gresco 22701 West 68th Terrace Shawnee, Kansas 66226 USA drew.gresco@imagenow.com 913.667.3109 www.imagenow.com Perceptive Software is helping organizations worldwide make an immediate impact on productivity and the bottom line with its enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. Easily integrate Perceptive Software ECM with your existing Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World applications to fuel operational efficiency. With Perceptive Software’s innovative technology, you can capture, manage and store important business content, access precise information when needed, and preserve its integrity throughout the business lifecycle.

Project Partners LLC Sales Contact: Michael Zwain 520 Purissima Street Half Moon Bay, CA 94019 USA mzwain@projectp.com 973.886.1825 www.projectp.com Project Partners provides expert Enterprise Project Portfolio Management services and software products that extend Oracle and Primavera applications to meet the needs of project-driven firms. An Oracle Certified Partner, Project Partners has executed global PPM projects for over 300 firms.

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Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Company Listings

ReadSoft Sales Contact: Jeff Johnston 3838 N. Causeway Blvd. | Suite 2400 Metairie, LA 70002 USA oracle@readsoft.com 888-READSOFT (73237638) www.readsoft.com Boost Oracle E-Business Suite’s performance with better visibility of accounts payable processes and liabilities, tighter controls, faster cycle time and substantial efficiency gains with ReadSoft’s data capture and Oracle-certified workflow solutions for approvals and discrepancy resolution.

Rolta TUSC Sales Contact: Barry Wiebe 377 E Butterfield Rd | Suite 100 Lombard, IL 60148 USA sales@tusc.com 800.755.TUSC (8872) www.tusc.com An Oracle Certified Advantage partner, Rolta TUSC provides expert functional and technical solutions in the areas of Oracle E-Business Suite Consulting, Enterprise Performance Management, Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing, Oracle and Open Systems Development (includes Fusion Middleware), Oracle DBA, Database, and Infrastructure Services, Managed Services for Remote DBA and E-Business Suite Support, Managed Hosting, Oracle Software Licensing, and Oracle Training & Mentoring.

Senryo Technologies Sales Contact: Philip Phistry 1300 Iroquois | Suite 155 Naperville, IL 60563 USA phil@senryo.com 303.905.1160 www.senryo.com Senryo is a full service Information Technology Solutions Company serving small, medium and Fortune 500 companies with special focus on Public Sector organizations. We provide business and technology strategy, systems design, applications implementation, systems integration and project management services. Our capabilities include end to end implementation of IT projects, Database Services and Support, Business Intelligence and Governance Risk and Compliance services. We provide several cost-cutting measures to save companies in their Information Technology and data management needs.

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Company Listings

Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Sierra Atlantic Sales Contact: Rebecca McCormick 6522 Kaiser Drive Fremont, CA 94555 USA rebecca.mccormick@sierraatlantic.com 510.742.4100 www.sierraatlantic.com

R

Sierra Atlantic has had a long-standing relationship with Oracle since 1991 as a co-development partner.

This extensive R&D relationship offers Sierra Atlantic a unique insight to deliver our broad level of Oracle services. Sierra Atlantic has the largest number of outsourced Oracle implementations, with projects and service engagements in over 40 countries.

SmartDog Services Sales Contact: Bob Specchio 7004 Bee Cave Rd Building 3 | Suite 100 Austin, Texas 78746 USA rspecchio@smartdogservices.com 512.628.0044 www.smartdogservices.com

The Oracle Customer ’s Best Friend

SmartDog Services is the first on command services, support, and consulting company totally dedicated to customers who run the Oracle Technical Stack and core eBusiness Suite modules. Our unique business model provides our customers with access to the entire SmartDog Team and our broad range of Oracle experts who specialize in helping customers maximize their investment in Oracle.

Teradata Corporation Sales Contact: Melonie Johns 2835 Miami Village Drive Miamisburg, OH 45342 USA melonie.johns@teradata.com 937.242.4764 www.teradata.com Teradata is an Oracle Certified Partner focused on OBI and ODI, and a leader in enterprise data warehousing.

The combination of OBIEE Plus, OBI Applications, Essbase, and ODI with the EDW helps companies make better, faster decisions that drive growth.

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Providers of solutions for your Oracle Applications

Company Listings

Unitask Software Sales Contact: Dale Royal 11427 Reed Hartman Highway Cincinnati, OH 45241 USA sales@unitask.com 866.UNITASK (864.8275) www.unitask.com Unitask is committed to helping organizations implement, manage and run their Oracle E-Business Suite.

Unitask creates, sells and supports software products for print and migration management based on experience gained from over a decade of Oracle E-Business Suite implementation projects.

Vertex, Inc. Sales Contact: Dave Homiak 1061 Old Cassatt Road Berwyn, PA 19312 USA Dave.Homaik@Vertexinc.com 800.355.3500 www.vertexinc.com

As the leading provider of corporate enterprise tax solutions, Vertex offers innovative products and services to help companies worldwide streamline their tax compliance processes. With Vertex, you have a trusted partner for discovering new strategic tax savings across every major line of business tax including income, sales, consumer use, value added, communications, and payroll. To learn more visit Vertex at VertexInc.com.

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U L T A A T R IONS G N O C

...to the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) for twenty years of service to the Oracle Applications users community.

The OAUG is the largest independent group serving users of Oracle Applications, including Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Agile, Hyperion, Oracle Retail, Oracle Communications, Siebel CRM and others.

Since 1990, the OAUG has provided its members with education, networking and a unified voice to Oracle via a wide range of activities and forums, including conferences, publications, education events, special interest groups, online communities and more.

oaug.org

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